NOTE: This is part 2 of a 2 part series which starts here.

The students & their culture

When making international comparisons one is rarely comparing like populations. Sometimes this problem is in the testing procedures, as pointed out in a previous post, “No such thing as high school comparisons with TIMSS.” Yet, even when the playing field is thought to be even, other factors do affect outcome.

In Finland there is very little immigration [1], and so most of the population speaks the language of their teachers. In the United States, land of diversity, where people from all over the world have flocked for a better opportunity, or flee oppressive situations, 20% (1 out of 5) people speak a language other than English at home [2]. Between 1994 and 2004 limited English proficient students increased by 65% [3]. This means that American schools have seen a sharp increase in students that have to overcome the challenge of learning in a language other than their own.

It is know that poverty is detrimental to education. Students coming from poor families, in general, do not do as well in school as their more economically advantaged peers. According to the CIA World Fact book, the poverty level of Finland is NA% (it is a welfare state) while the United States is 19.5%. This also creates inequity in school systems, and sometimes within the same school district. While one school building gets enough resources another has to go without. This does not happen in Finland.

Finland puts a premium on resource equity and invests more heavily in schools for immigrant children. Meanwhile, Finland avoids standardized testing: the 15-year-old Finns who performed so well on PISA were taking a standardized test for the first time. [4]

The irony here begins to become evident if you compare the United States gross national product (GPN) per capita of $46,400 to Finland’s of $34,900, you find that economically we appear to be performing better. The graph below demonstrates the trend over the years.

Click on graph to enlarge.

We find that we live in a country with a 19.5% poverty rate, yet we produce over $12,000 more GNP per person than the country with 0% poverty and high international test scores. The topic of test scores and international economic performance will be address in some future post. I only mention it now to get people to start thinking about the assumptions we make about international test scores as they relate to international competitiveness.

The Unites States has a population of 302.2 million, while Finland sports a population of 5.3 million. With a smaller and less diverse population it is easier for the Finnish people to be more united in their goals. Few would argue that the United States is currently divided. Some people talk of seceding from the nation, conservative and liberal politics create philosophical chasms, and divisions caused by racial prejudice make unity a problem for our country. It is difficult to work together toward a common goal when people have such diverse opinions about what the goal should be, let along how to get there. Perhaps this national turmoil contributes to our education woes.

The point of these observations is not to offer definitive reasons for the disparity in test scores between Finland and the United States, but to show that we are dealing with two very different populations. In other words, it is impossible to say that if the Finnish school system was magically transported to the United States that it would have the same success.

Notes and references:

1. According to the Center for Immigration Studies, 1 in 8  (12.5%) U.S. residents is an immigrant. Using the data from Statistics Finland, “Naturalized foreigners and foreigners by age structure 2009,” I calculate their immigration population to be about 2.9% (immigrants total 155,705 divided by total population of 5,300,484 multiplied by 100 to find percentage). These numbers, of course, do not represent all individuals who do not speak the countries’ primary language.
2. “20 percent of people living in U.S. speak language other than English at home,” by Stephen Ohlemacher, Associated PRess, Post and Courier, 12 September 2010.
3. “Spotlight on Limited English Proficient Students in the United States,” by Jeanne Batalova, Migration Policy Institute, February 2006.
4. “Contradictory international test scores,” staff, Fair Test, January 2005.